William took Rosaline on the tour of the house, explained all the security details, and what he planned with the house – the renovations and the things they needed to fix.
The garage housed a “1967 Chevrolet Camaro” which had Rosaline wide-eyed.
“Is this..?”
“Yes. It came with the house.”
“Wow” “I’m so jealous.”
“I’ll lend it to you after I fix it.”
“You know how to fix cars?”
“Not really. But I’m learning. Besides, I have time.” William shrugged.
“This must have cost you a fortune.”
“I told you I got a steal deal. The old man’s only granddaughter was born and raised overseas. Since she is already settled there, she simply wanted to get rid of this house, so kind of sold it really cheap – I mean like much lower than the lowest market price. I think some bad memories are attached to her parents. You see there’s no picture of the kid and grand-kid after the woman’s passing.”
“Hmm. Even with that, it must have been expensive.”
“Are you trying to pry into my finances?” William joked.
“Just trying to wrap my head around what I have landed myself into.”
“It was a joke.”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
“I have been playing and designing games since I was a kid. I had made a few friends with who I used to play multiplayer games. I had several teams as well. In particular, I had an extremely great rapport with Albert Grey.
We had the same wavelengths when it came to gaming and we had great coordination. So, we were co-teammates on all our games while other players shuffled between a dozen people we used to play with.
He was also the only person I shared my game idea with, and later the first test version of the first game I had developed. We played together, brainstormed ideas, did a lot of QA, and made a ton of changes.
After we thought it was good enough to release and play with others, he suggested we share it with his parents first to get more eyes on it. We altered it some more based on his parent’s feedback.
His father, who happens to be a lawyer, said that instead of releasing it for free, we could sell it. Both his parents, especially his mother, helped a lot with market research, minor adjustments which lead to higher returns, and planning for the other products that Albert and I developed together.
I was 13 when our first game was sold, Albert was 10 and a half. We did not even have a bank account at that time, at least not one we knew of. Albert’s mother said that since we are already working on other games, we could register a company.
Registering it is not a big deal, we don’t actually have to develop it in the future if we don’t want to. But if we do want to, we’d have all our ideas and every product we sold legally under our brand. So, it’s a win-win.
I had no idea the name of the company, so when Albert suggested we name it AR for his mother’s name ‘Aria’, I agreed. Hence, my company AR group was established.
It was also Aunt Aria’s idea to make it a general name instead of AR games, in case we changed our line of business later on. In hindsight, it turned out to be a great one.”